Peachwood

Chapter One

Omnia Suzette Abernathy was digging a hole in the garden. It was about twice as deep as a bathing tub and only half as long. She wore an old pair of tailored men’s trousers and a long sleeved muck shirt. Her feet were bare in the damp black earth, the cold from the ground was making it difficult to tell where her feet stopped and the world began. A miniature lamp burned at the lip of the hole, illuminating a small circumference of light about her. Her long grey hair was pinned back into a small crowning bun.

As she shoveled, she kept quiet, her mind focusing on the pit, the sound of the shovel biting into the dirt was followed by the soft tumble of wet gravel landing on the ever increasing mound beside it. Her breathing was steady; this was not hard work for her. When the hole was deep enough, she straightened and pressed the sides of the hole with her feet, stomping it into place.

She easily lifted herself out of the void. Leaning the shovel against the pile of excavated earth she disappeared into the darkness and came back dragging a very large plant with mammoth leaves that were tied together to form a spear. The spear was above a bulb the size of a modest boulder. With some maneuvering she got the plant into the hole, it was a perfect fit, both down and across. She filled in the small corners and covered the little patch of exposed bulb with a shovel full of soil.

She then took hold of the shovel once again and gathered up a large heap of earth, it was heavy and her arms straightened, and she leant counter to its weight as she vanished into the darkness again to fill up the other hole. She had wondered if it might be useful to use the wheelbarrow in this instance, but decided that the wheelbarrow should only be used for distances more than six yards. She walked back and forth with her heavy load until the other hole was filled to her satisfaction.

She took the lamp and the shovel walking around to the back of her cottage, looking up Omnia saw the clear night sky above. She could make out a few constellations and could see a sliver of the moon behind her proud apple tree. Plants on either side of her pathway grew high and strong. She picked some roses and a handful of lemongrass.

At the back of her cottage there was a large garden that was impossible to see from the outside. A large stone wall connecting from the house wall ran in a semicircle all the way around to the other side. From the outside the wall looked to be part of the house; well, it would if you could see it under the ivy. She hung up the shovel and closed the connecting door.

Peace. As the moon rose it glittered across the short cut lawn. There was a large thick tin bathtub raised up on four square bricks. Underneath was a blackened pit, the water pump stood close by with its large ornate handle and bucket at the ready. Omnia had electric lights and even had a gas line installed but mostly she forgot to use them. When she remembered she would switch on the lights, but found the light too hard and impractical if she had perfectly good candles and lamps. The gas however was a wonderful addition to her cottage, she loved to cook with it and it was superb for a fast cup of tea. For Omnia, life wasn’t all about efficiency, and yet, each day started at 3:30 AM, and ended somewhere near 10 PM. Sometimes she would turn it around and do things differently when circumstances called for it, but when undisturbed her life followed this routine. She put down the lamp and foliage onto a previously unseen stairway that followed along the wall up onto the roof. She had built these additions herself, and was quite happy with the outcome. She climbed the stairs and chose three pieces of peach wood that she enjoyed the smell of.

She made quick work of creating the fire under the bath tub, as it grew and became stronger she pulled on the heavy leaver to pump water. She carried the large buckets back and forth she started to mentally design a moveable channel that she would build so that she could pump the water directly into the tub. She did not want the tub itself too close to the pump because she felt that would look cluttered and might reek of laziness. As she filled the tub the sweet smoke from the peach wood filled the air. She took the rose petals and lemon grass and put them into the bath water to start to stew and release their oils.

5 buckets of water later and the bath was ready. The water was hot and steaming soundly. She took off her muck shirt and hung it on its own hook. The trousers had a hook beside the other. On the far right there was a hard piece of cloth that at some point might have resembled a towel. She took it down along with a piece of soap and a small glass bottle filled with spirits.

She poured some of the alcohol into the bath to disinfect the water. Testing it with her hand her skin only turned a slight shade of pink. She unpinned her hair which still tried to stay in its bun shape. When she was younger it might have fallen in locks down her back, but even if it did she was unlikely to have noticed then any more than she would have noticed at the present.

She bathed quickly, scrubbing her face and neck; she paid particular attention to her feet and legs. She lathered up the soap and washed her hair twice. The smell of peach wood, rose and lemongrass left her with a type of perfume that was very much distinctly her own. Almost all of the members of the community would find themselves instinctively sitting up a little straighter and using less profanity when they smelt any of those three things, the few that did not were either too young to know better or too stupid to know what that smell meant.

Omnia was the local midwife and the closest thing the village had to a doctor. Her late father was Dr. Hilbert Abernathy. He was the one who trained her to be a midwife. From the age of 8 she would accompany him on his calls; she would carry his bag and act as both nurse and intern. She knew how to set a broken leg and what to do if a contagion was discovered, she could birth any child, anywhere, and had a host of cures and remedies for everything from the common cold to kidney failure. She had been at the birthing and deathbeds of almost everyone in the village. Some of the older folks remembered her father and accepted her ministrations claiming all her brilliance to have been learnt from him. These false presumptions aside, the community stayed healthy and strong under her care.

Omnia’s mother had died in childbirth; Dr. Abernathy was away to London to help curb the spread of an outbreak of the measles at the time. The child was premature and nearly did not survive either. When he returned it was a mournful situation all together. The child was sent to live with her grandmother for the first few years and then she was sent to the convent when she turned five. Three years later she was returned to her father after she had given a sound thrashing to a local boy from the neighboring school for torturing live birds and snakes.

Realising his young daughter had both a strong will and little promise as a future nun he had her go back to live with him, he enjoyed the company and she enjoyed the freedom. He continued her education as best he could. Lessons of reading and writing and basic arithmetic was essential when mixing medicines. She was never very fond of stories or poems, at night she would ask him to explain medical terminologies to her and to the sound of his voice she would fall asleep. He would tuck her in and then mostly he would smoke his pipe in front of the fire for a few hours before he would go to his study and fall asleep on the small spare bed. He never could bring himself to sleep in his bedroom after the death of his wife.

Omnia pulled the makeshift plug at the bottom of the tin bathtub and the outflow of water put the coals out and watered the garden. She dried herself with the hard towel that exfoliated her skin and kept her feeling fresh. The early morning was still dark and she correctly guessed that it was probably around 4:30. She hung up the towel back in its place and replaced the soap and spirits to their shelf. Taking the lamp she went inside.

The house was very dark and she lit a few candles and an extra lamp that sat on the kitchen table and the window sill. She filled a small tin kettle with water and placed in on the lit gas stove. As the water came up from freezing she went upstairs and got dressed quickly. She’d always like to get dressed in the time it took for the kettle to boil, any longer than that would be an unnecessary wastage of time. When her father had been called out in the middle of the night she was often given less than three minutes to get herself ready. With skirts and dresses it was a terrible commotion. Between the ages of eight and fourteen she had struggled to keep up with her father’s long strides as he would march to the bedsides of the sick and dying. When Omnia had turned fourteen her body had sprouted up like a bean stalk. She was tall and lanky like her father; many of his clothes fitted her. They started to share a wardrobe and from behind it was difficult to tell Dr. Abernathy from his daughter. Any objection raised by the locals were quashed by Dr. Abernathy’s unbridled delight in his daughter, and his steadfast determination to afford her many freedoms.

Omnia always was somehow exempt from the traditional rules that girls and ladies had to follow. It was said that it was because she had no mother, or that she was a training midwife. She’d delivered 21 babies before she herself turned 21, each one healthy and the mothers not only survived but made quick recoveries.

Omnia pulled on her cotton briefs and her trousers; she put on her socks and looped the ankle straps under the hollows of her feet, she pulled her black leather soled boots out from under the bed and put them on her feet quickly. Standing she pulled a soft cotton undershirt over her head and tucked it into her grey pants. Taking a fresh shirt from it’s hanger she pushed her arms through the sleeves and started buttoning it. Opening the cupboard she looked at the variety of cravats, most of them were once her fathers but over the years she had added a few to her collection. She decided to wear a yellow silk cravat to celebrate the happy day that was approaching. Young Miss Forester was soon to become Mrs. Peter Appleshank; Omnia had seen them both into the world and felt they were a well suited match. Wearing the colour of sunshine would be her gesture of goodwill to the children. With three pins in her mouth she ran her fingers through her now dry hair, she folded the hair into a bun and pinned it in place. As she descended the stairs the tea kettle started to sing.

She quickly and quietly prepared her tea. Neither milk nor sugar was added; those things were to be used in puddings and medicine only. She sipped at the hot liquid and saw the light starting to change. Looking at her wall clock she saw that it was a quarter to five. At five o’clock she would have her breakfast of another cup of tea and two slices of toast with a smear of whatever she had in the pantry. Mrs. Lovejoy from down in the village had been so grateful for Omnia’s assistant with her constipated and consequently grumpy husband that she had given Omnia a healthy slice of cheese and a square of hard butter in the form of thanks.

Officially Omnia was the local midwife; a seasonal employment at best, unofficially she was the local doctor as well. People paid her to help deliver children. She would consult and give most medicine freely unless the medicine required was from further away than Anchorage. People knew and respected that it was a tradition not to pay her for her medical help, so they would give what they could when they could. If they could not afford to give anything, they would normally help with some chore. Omnia could do all of these things herself, of course, but she knew that pride was the dearest thing she could charge, so very often one of the children from the poorer families would come and help weed the front garden or help to arrange the library into alphabetical order. The children would always leave with full bellies and a little more information in their heads than before.

As the light grew outside Omnia looked out the window and had a perfect view of the village below. She was right to move the big plant. The chimneys from all the houses issued smoke each wife inside each home was baking, cooking, boiling or steaming something delicious for the wedding celebration. There would be songs and music, games and sermons. The wedding itself was to take place at 3 in the afternoon, and afterwards the celebrations would simply recommence.

At half past six Omnia checked her medical bag for supplies; no doubt today would involve at least one bee sting and a few twisted ankles from the games. She took some smelling salts as she knew that Mrs. Forester, quite a silly and vain woman, would loath not having attention all day and would most certainly faint at some point and need a crowd of revivers to rescue her. Omnia packed the sulphur salts rather than the sweet ones. The lingering smell of the sulphur salt might help avoid more than one fainting spell. She also packed a fairly large box of white tablets. These were her famous hangover cure; she knew that by the end of the evening she would have more than one request for them. She was always carful to make a grand fuss about the potency of the tablets and insisted that the first be drunk with no less than two pints of water before bed and the next to be drunk in the morning using the same measurement of water to help dilute its power. All the men of the community swore by the tables that were little more than flour pills with a coating of sugar. At the height of the festive seasons the hang over pills became like currency amongst the younger lads who would generally drink themselves into stupors. She detested drink as a terrible vice, but she knew that simply telling the men to drink water would not inspire them to do so; tablets were what they believed in.

She tidied up after her breakfast and washed up, and filled the drying rack where the single use items would remain until her return that evening. With one last look in her bag she was sure she had everything she needed as well as a few things she hoped she would never need. Setting out she found the path clear and devoid of life, the world it would seem, was still sleeping.